Cleared doctor wants to return to Australia
An Indian doctor freed from jail in Australia when terror charges against him were dropped for lack of evidence today said he wanted to go back to work in Australia.
The jailing of Mohamed Dr Haneef, 27, had aroused waves of sympathy in his native India where he was greeted with a hero’s welcome upon his return a day earlier.
Dr Haneef today met with the chief minister of the Karnataka state, who offered him a job in a state-run hospital.
But Dr Haneef, speaking at his first media conference since his release, indicated he preferred to return to his work at Australia’s Gold Coast Hospital.
The hospital said his job is waiting for him if he regains his visa.
“I am saddened by the fact that until my work visa is returned I will not be able to return to work there,” Dr Haneef said.
The doctor was allowed to return home after the Australia’s top prosecutor on Friday dropped the charge because of a lack of evidence.
But the immigration minister said he will not reverse his earlier decision to revoke Dr Haneef’s working visa.
Dr Haneef’s lawyer Peter Russo said he planed to appeal the decision to strip Dr Haneef of his visa in the Federal Court on August 8.
Dr Haneef also said he did not expect an apology from the Australian authorities, after Australia’s prime minister said today his government would not apologise.
“I don’t expect any apologies from the Australian authorities or government, but they should apologise to this peace loving country here and its citizens,” he said.
Many in India charged that Heneef’s arrest was racially motivated.
Dr Haneef had been arrested on July 2 at an airport in Brisbane as he was about to fly to India to see his wife and newborn daughter – just days after his second cousins in Britain were arrested in a failed terror plot.
Dr Haneef had been charged with providing reckless support to a terrorist organisation because he gave his mobile phone SIM card to one of his second cousins, Sabeel Ahmed, when he left Britain in July last year.
Dr Haneef indicated that he may choose to sue the Australian government over his detention, but that no decision had been made yet.
